Sunday, October 2, 2011

Houston Drops Texas in Shootout 3-2

The Houston Aeros came in to the Cedar Park Center and knocked the Stars down to 0-1-1-1 in the preseason tonight with a 3-2 shootout loss. Tyler Arnason and Dan Spang scored for Texas, who saw Houston's expected starting goalie in the regular season, Matt Hackett for all 65 minutes and the shootout.

Regarding the Stars' preseason record, "Everyone is working on systems," said Spang. "I think we've gotten a little better each game." Brenden Dillon added to that, ""I think as a team we should feel really confident going into the year."

The scoring opened up early in the game with Dan Spang finding twine on a power play. Spang was excited about the team's success on the power play so far, "It's just a little different setup. We're trying to feel it out." Jace Coyle and Mike Hedden had assists on the play, but the lead wouldn't hold for long.

Joel Broda tied things up four a half minutes later. Former Star Warren Peters gave the Aeros a lead with just over a minute left in the period. With Ryan Garbutt in the box for a check to the head, Peter's PP tally was a redirected point shot that beat Beskorowany.

Texas tied it up with a goal from Tyler Arnason in the 2nd period. The goal was a nice snipe from the top of the circles to beat Hackett glove side high. That tie would hold over through to overtime. Along the way, several fights cropped up as the play remained chippy through the second and third.

The game wound its way to overtime with Billy Sauer replacing Tyler Beskorowany in the third period. Beskorowany stopped 17 of 19 shot and Sauer had 11 saves on 11 shots through OT. In the shootout, it was Jarrod Palmer putting the dagger in Texas with his goal to beat Sauer in the shootout 3 shots to two.

All of the shootout goals scored against Sauer were tallied when the Aeros got him moving side to side. It is a definite point that he will need to improve on to stick at the AHL level. He had a solid preseason overall, however, stopping 54 of 57 (.947 SV%) in 4 periods of action.

Now Texas looks to integrate some of the new roster players sent down from Dallas today as well as determine which tryout players, if any, will stick with the club for the regular season. "We need to get everything to be second nature so that when we're in a live game, everyone knows where to go and what to do," said Spang. "We've got a lot of guys that just came down today and they're going to get a lot of systems stuff thrown at them."

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